Dark personality impacts on saving and spending attitudes: A multi-group analysis between self-support and loan students

Abstract

This research explored differences and compared the influences of the Dark Triad personality, Machiavellianism (MACH), Narcissism (NAR) and Psychopathy (PSY), towards saving and spending attitudes between self-support and loan students. The randomly selected 610 Thai undergraduate students completed the measures namely Saving Behavior Scale and Short Dark Triad Thai Version (SD3-TH). The Structural Equation Modeling with a multi-group analysis was applied to compare the differences across groups. The present findings revealed that spending attitudes shared the highest positive correlation with PSY in a loan student group. Spending attitude in self-support students was predicted significantly by all positive Dark Triad traits; however, spending attitude in loan students was predicted by only positive MACH and PSY. On the other hand, saving attitude showed a moderately strong relationship with MACH which significantly predicted the same in both groups of students. Based on the present findings, MACH generalizability benefits in saving attitude and PSY shows the possibility to define potentially risk spending intention across two groups of students.